Although the wide-ranging state environmental regulations can be complex both scientifically and legally, as the state’s chief law enforcement officer, state attorneys general play an important role in the area of environmental policy. In some states, attorneys general have direct enforcement authority, but in all states the attorney general represents state environmental agencies. Sometimes this means enforcing existing statutes and regulations and at other times it means defending challenges to agency permitting decisions or rules brought by corporate or other entities or individuals. Attorneys general have also been known to assemble task forces, propose legislation, and launch other initiatives.
In recent years attorneys general across the nation have taken up initiatives to address cases of common law nuisance in order to not only reduce the effects of anthropogenically-caused climate change on public health, welfare and safety but to protect each state’s natural resources. The success of this initiative is seen in the Supreme Court decision in the case Massachusetts et al., Petitioners v Environmental Protection Agency, et al: it was ruled that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. A prominent legal milestone for environmental protection, attorneys general not only participated in a multi-state effort but collaborated with various environmental non-governmental organizations and advocacy groups to ensure success.
Over the last several years, the National State Attorney sGeneral Program has made tremendous strides to build bridges between federal and state governments on important matters of environmental law. Beginning with its first conference on the Role of State Attorneys General in National Environmental Policy in 2004, the Program has continued to develop ways to stimulate the discussion, and develop action plans between national and state leaders. In the summer and fall of 2008, representatives of the Program conducted onsite visits with environmental leaders at selected state attorneys general offices, including Colorado, Delaware, Maryland and Massachusetts while also presenting at two major national conferences to various state and national environmental regulation leaders. With the purpose of providing the incoming administration in Washington the issues concerning state legal and environmental interests that require the most immediate attention, on December 15, 2008, the Program convened a bipartisan group of thirteen leading environmental lawyers from eleven state Attorneys General offices at Columbia Law School for two days of closed meetings and strategy discussions. In the report, State Attorneys General Environmental Leadership Agenda, the group outlined the states' top four priority issues. The agenda has paved the way for significant progress on these issues, and renewed state and federal partnerships.
Columbia Law School became a leader in the study of environmental law in the 1970s and has hardly rested on its past achievements. Today, the School boasts of faculty teaching cutting-edge regulatory approaches to the subject, as well as a new clinic that provides the teaching of lawyering skills in the context of pursuing real cases and a center to develop new legal techniques to fight climate change and train people in their use. Click here to access the Columbia Law School Environmental Law Clinic. Click here to access the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School (CCCL) led by Director and Professor of Professional Practice, Michael Gerrard.
Click here to access the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE), a research center at Berkeley Law with a mission to foster interdisciplinary environmental law and policy research and to translate that research into pragmatic solutions. The executive director is Lecturer in Residence at Berkeley Law Richard Frank.
This page is designed to provide important articles and resources that may be helpful in understanding the role that attorneys general are playing on this important issue.
